lifelong possessions.  They confer precision; because, if you are doing a thing, you must do it definitely right or definitely wrong.  They give honesty; for, when you express yourself by making things, and not by using words, it becomes impossible to dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity.  They beget a habit of self-reliance; they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher’s disciplinary functions to a minimum.

Of the various systems of manual training, so far as woodwork is concerned, the Swedish Sloyd system, if I may have an opinion on such matters, seems to me by far the best, psychologically considered.  Manual training methods, fortunately, are being slowly but surely introduced into all our large cities.  But there is still an immense distance to traverse before they shall have gained the extension which they are destined ultimately to possess.

* * * * *

No impression without expression, then,—­that is the first pedagogic fruit of our evolutionary conception of the mind as something instrumental to adaptive behavior.  But a word may be said in continuation.  The expression itself comes back to us, as I intimated a moment ago, in the form of a still farther impression,—­the impression, namely, of what we have done.  We thus receive sensible news of our behavior and its results.  We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander’s eyes the success or failure of our conduct.  Now this return wave of impression pertains to the completeness of the whole experience, and a word about its importance in the schoolroom may not be out of place.

It would seem only natural to say that, since after acting we normally get some return impression of result, it must be well to let the pupil get such a return impression in every possible case.  Nevertheless, in schools where examination marks and ‘standing’ and other returns of result are concealed, the pupil is frustrated of this natural termination of the cycle of his activities, and often suffers from the sense of incompleteness and uncertainty; and there are persons who defend this system as encouraging the pupil to work for the work’s sake, and not for extraneous reward.  Of course, here as elsewhere, concrete experience must prevail over psychological deduction.  But, so far as our psychological deduction goes, it would suggest that the pupil’s eagerness to know how well he does is in the line of his normal completeness of function, and should never be balked except for very definite reasons indeed.

Acquaint them, therefore, with their marks and standing and prospects, unless in the individual case you have some special practical reason for not so doing.

VI.  NATIVE REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS

We are by this time fully launched upon the biological conception.  Man is an organism for reacting on impressions:  his mind is there to help determine his reactions, and the purpose of his education is to make them numerous and perfect. Our education means, in short, little more than a mass of possibilities of reaction, acquired at home, at school, or in the training of affairs.  The teacher’s task is that of supervising the acquiring process.